Days after voters took Congress away from his party, President Donald Trump put the architect of his deportation program in charge of the White House. Stephen Miller became chief of staff on Monday, Nov. 9, replacing Susie Wiles, who moves to Trump’s political operation.
Trump announced the change Friday. He said he was “pleased to announce” that Miller, until now his deputy chief of staff, would take the job.
The NAACP answered within hours. “Stephen Miller belongs nowhere near the Oval Office. He belongs before a judge,” president Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “Giving Miller more authority puts Black communities, immigrants and everyone this administration has targeted in greater danger.”
The stake for Black readers is the people his policies reach: Black immigrants, Haitians among them, and the families, neighbors and congregations around them across the country. Miller has driven that policy from inside the building. His record, as the outlets covering the promotion lay it out, includes the 2017 travel ban, the zero-tolerance policy that separated families at the border and the current mass deportation push. He has also proposed a quota of 3,000 ICE arrests a day and the suspension of habeas corpus protections.
Democrats were blunt. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Miller a “dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called him “the architect of the most barbaric, inhumane policies.” Rep. Robert Garcia, who will chair House Oversight in the new Congress, told Miller to “lawyer up,” accusing him of orchestrating “unconstitutional ICE raids.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who will run the committee that oversees ICE, has said he wants Miller under oath.
The timing is the message. Black voters backed Democrats by overwhelming margins last Tuesday, and immigration enforcement was among the policies on the ballot. Trump’s answer was to promote the man who wrote it, not to soften it. A chief of staff controls who and what reaches the president, so the next two months of decisions pass through Miller’s office.
Democrats take their majorities in January. Thompson’s hearing is where the country can finally make Miller answer, under oath, for what he has done and what he intends next.
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